By this point my mentality of you are not dead yet was complimented by another from my life. It comes from cycling folk law – I believe the originator or documenter of the rules is first laid down in a book called “Velominati – Keepers of the Cog”
My mentality often made me think of cancer like a long ride with lots of climbs and grinding pain, with flat dull sections where the road stretched out and occasional downhill moments – I didn’t view the downhills as getting seriously ill – they are the bits I enjoyed like going home, the moments of light and hope that put smile on my face – the bit that reassured and reminded me that I wasn’t dead yet.
There are 100 rules in total in “the Rules” (and many are very specific to cycling) but the important ones are
Rule 1 // Obey The Rules.
Rule 2 // Lead by example.
It is forbidden for someone familiar with The Rules to knowingly assist another person to breach them.
Rule 3 // Guide the uninitiated.
No matter how good you think your reason is to knowingly breach The Rules, it is never good enough.
Rule 4// It’s all about the bike.
It is, absolutely, without question, unequivocally, about the bike.
Rule 5 // Harden the F$$$ Up
Rule 5 has stayed with me and my friends – perhaps its something being in the north only really breeds or rather excels at – the need to push through misery. In the case of mountain biking and cycling that’s means cold, rain, fog, mist snow, wind – all the conditions that probably most sensible people would open the door, see the weather, close it and go sit back down and do something inside. When I was a kid my Dad perhaps created one of the first iterations of Rule 5. He would take us out walking the fells of the lake district and locally. Me and my two brothers would generally be in specially selected “hand me down” boots and jackets in various states of suboptimal sizing. The weather more often that not would be poor, often verging on the biblically shit. With cold and damp seeping through to our very cores we’d still get the same question – “bet you’d rather be here that sat at home infront of the TV with the fire on?” In truth I would – it felt like an odd thing to say and I’m forever grateful my parents pushed me this way – it makes me feel alive. If Dad didn’t come up with rule 5 as a response to our sore feet, cold hands, wet clothes and our constant hunger he was certainly close.
For clarity I don’t feel like we were mistreated, malnourished or had a bad childhood. I was exceptionally lucky to have loving caring parents and brothers. As brothers we were always hungry though, didn’t really matter how much food went in it was burnt off staving off crappy weather and making bikes go faster.
To cherry pick from the remainder that resonate well with having cancer rule 10 feels like the later stages of chemo – as I moved through and could see the light of the tunnel rule 10 becomes apparent;
Rule 10 // It never gets easier, you just go faster. As this famous quote by Greg LeMond tells us, training, climbing, and racing is hard. It stays hard. To put it another way, per Greg Henderson: “Training is like fighting with a gorilla. You don’t stop when you’re tired. You stop when the gorilla is tired.” Cancer often feels like a gorilla………
I have always liked Rule 12 and to be honest think its relevant to lots of things that make people happy – be it cars, bike, handbags, shoes whatever.
Rule 12 // The correct number of bikes to own is n+1.While the minimum number of bikes one should own is three, the correct number is n+1, where n is the number of bikes currently owned. This equation may also be re-written as s-1, where s is the number of bikes owned that would result in separation from your partner. I like my bikes but I love my wife.